Hal shows off his catch!

Wow, didn’t realize how long it had been since I posted. My apologies!! Spring fishing on Lake Palestine has been excellent on the normal springlike days. The erratic weather we’ve been experiencing has definitely made it more difficult to keep up with the fish pattern. As soon as they start schooling up, we get a cold front and it starts all over. Basically, the bait fish have been in shallow water making it the place to be for exceptional hybrid striper, sand and black bass fishing until the weather drastically changes and the bait fish move. Today, the temp was in the 40′s and foggy so I rescheduled for another day being that my party lived in Tyler. My objective is and always has been to provide the best possible fishing experience for my clients and I will do everything I can to make this happen. I will not take you out when I know that the bite is poor! With that said I have had to reschedule quite a few of you lately due to the changing fish pattern. Although it’s disappointing at the time I know that you and I will be both be pleased with the results when we get on em’. Our successful trips on Lake Palestine have been wonderful producing hardy hybrids, sandies and black bass with almost every cast. My last party wanted to catch and release and their experience was truly spectacular. They caught a fish on every cast for a solid hour and a half. Man, it was GREAT! With that said, I sure hope that this is the last cold front we have this Spring.

I’ve also been running trips on Cedar Creek Lake which is only an hour from Dallas.  If you enjoy catching catfish from 2-20lbs with the average size being 4-8# this is the place to be! The bite is exceptional and the fishing is fast. The limit is 25 per person and it doesn’t take long accomplish this. Everyone has been going home with plenty of fish for those fish fry’s. We’re Carolina rigging in shallow water with live bait and wearing them out. I also have to carefully watch the weather when fishing this lake as the entire lake is surrounded by a retainer wall so winds in excess of 15mph make for a rocky ride although my new Skeeter handles it a whole lot better than my old Baystealth.

I don’t have any Saturday’s available in May, but still have some Sunday’s open. If you can get a workday off, I still have several days Monday thru Friday available this month. Take a break and let’s go fishing!

See you on the water!

Nice Hybrid Stripers Guys!!

Well, we made it thru the winter blast and are enjoying some warmer fishing weather.  The first couple of weeks in February brought with it some mighty cold weather conditions for us Texans, but we got out there on the below freezing days and brought in some nice sandies, crappie and hybrids! One of my corporate groups brought 221 fish to the cleaning table on one of those bone chilling days. Sure can’t refer to them as “fair weather” fishermen!!  

The spawn is on!  The sand bass, hybrids and cats have moved to shallow water.  Again, this move is earlier in the year than usual which I believe is attributed to the below normal lake levels. Although we had some rain, Lake Palestine is still about 2′ below normal and the water temperature is around 48 degrees. We’ve been catching the sandies, hybrids, cats and an occasional black bass in the creeks and river on red eyes and live shad. We have also set up drifts and got in em’ on slabs, red eye and sassy shad off the bottom. The birds are especially helpful in my hunt for some great sandie and hybrid action. Occasionally, they will put us on some really exciting top water action.

The crappie bite has slowed dramatically under the bridge. We had been catching em’ over by the dam, but they have now moved out to more shallow water as well. We’re catching em’ on live minnows and jigs.   

Heard some great news for those of you that enjoy catfishing on Lake Palestine. There was an article in the Tyler paper indicating that the bag limit for catfish will increase from 25 to a whopping 50 per person in 2012!! Man, that’s alot of fish!

The 10 day weather forecast is predicting some outstanding fishing weather with most days in the upper 60′s and low 70′s. I have some days open both this weekend and next so take some time off and let’s go fishing!

See you on the water!!